Tupperware seeks to spice up image

December 23, 2009|beth kassab

As a 30-something working mother, I've never attended one of the storied Tupperware parties that my mother or grandmothers knew.

I'm more prone to do the quick and easy thing and grab another brand off the shelf at Publix. And that's likely how I'll store today's Christmas dinner leftovers along with millions of other Americans.

Apparently, I'm not alone.

It's one of the trends Orlando-based Tupperware Brands will try to combat in 2010 as it launches a new marketing campaign by a new public relations firm.

The Tupperware name is still as iconic as it once was. But while Tupperware has made strides in growing its business in emerging markets such as China, Russia and India, it admits it needs a makeover in the U.S.

"We got to a point where we needed some fresh eyes on the brand," said spokeswoman Elinor Steele. "We want everyone to see that we're a hip and happening brand."

The company let go of the PR firm it had employed for more than 10 years and earlier this month hired Maloney & Fox, a boutique agency out of New York.

Margie Fox said the chance to compete for the contract with such a classic brand was the PR equivalent of " George Clooney calling and asking you out on a date."

Now her company, known for some of its viral and gorilla marketing tactics, is readying to launch a series of events for Tupperware early next year.

"It's a beloved brand to so very many people," she said. "There are so many more that need to meet it and re-meet it and learn to love it like everybody else does."

For a company that, as a general rule, doesn't pay for advertising, doesn't offer its products in stores and relies on direct selling and word of mouth, an image transformation will be a challenge.

Fox says she is up to the task. Before she made her big pitch to Tupperware executives, she flew into Orlando early, determined to first conquer her fear of heights by riding Disney's Tower of Terror.

"It was the scariest, yet the most exhilarating experience," she said.

Now she'll brave the intimidating process of trying to take a marketing message viral on the Internet or otherwise spark the kind of buzz that translates into dollars for the company. She was mum on details of the campaign, but said the goal is about "really knocking people's socks off and surprising them, being in different and unexpected places with unexpected people."

Tupperware has made some deviations from its no-advertising, no in-store sales mantra overseas. In Russia, for example, the company pays to sponsor a Saturday morning cooking show that features wild and crazy chefs who use, of course, Tupperware. And China is the only place where it offers small storefronts or kiosks, Steele said.

There is no indication that plans are in the works for that type of change in the U.S.

Just last month, Susan Goings, wife of Chief Executive Officer Rick Goings, helped throw a mini-Tupperware party at a meeting of influential women led by Lauren Zalaznick, president of NBC's Women & Lifestyle Entertainment Networks. The group includes author and producer Candace Bushnell, CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo, Liz Lange, founder of Liz Lange Maternity, among others.

The company featured its ice cream scoop, cork screw and other wares and gave the women a gift bag with a $100 certificate to the Tupperware Web site in hopes that the opinion makers would push the products to their friends.

Steele said the reception was so good, "you would have thought we had given them Bergdorf gift certificates."

The key will be for the company to somehow replicate that response on a large enough scale so that the message trickles down to working moms like me.